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Monday, February 12, 2018

9,500-Year-Old Tree Found In Sweden Is The World’s Oldest Tree

There is something deeply fascinating about an old tree, maybe the fact that it has been around for years witnessing people come and go, wars, revolutions( and probably bored to death). Well, Old Tjikko has seen it all, regarding the fact that it has been around approximately 9,500 years.

Even though 9,550 years will give you the idea that Old Tjikko is the world’s oldest tree, but is not, instead is the oldest living clonal Norway Spruce, as there are older clonal trees, while no individual tree reaches Old Tjikko’s age.

Old Tjikko is estimated to be at least 9,550 years old, making it the world’s oldest known individual vegetatively cloned tree. It stands 5 metres (16 ft) tall and is located on Fulufjället Mountain of Dalarna province in Sweden.For thousands of years, the tree appeared in a stunted shrub formation (also known as a krummholz formation) due to the harsh extremes of the environment in which it lives. During the warming of the last century, the tree has sprouted into a normal tree formation. The man who discovered the tree, Leif Kullman (Professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University), has attributed this growth spurt to global warming, and given the tree its nickname “Old Tjikko” after his late dog.

“During the ice age sea level was 120 meters lower than today and much of what is now the North Sea in the waters between England and Norway was at that time forest,” Professor Kullman told Aftonbladet. Winds and low temperatures made Old Tjikko “like a bonsai tree…Big trees cannot get as old as this.”